April 5, 1982

Wholesale prices for a growing number of products - including aluminum, sugar, gasoline and steel - continued to decline in March, an indication of further weakening in the economy, according to a survey of the nation's purchasing managers. ''There is a definite decline in prices,'' said Jack Haltmen, manager of material purchases for the Mueller Brass Company, a subsidiary of the Sharon Steel Company. ''Even any premiums we were paying a couple of months ago for delivery and other services have dropped dramatically. We find that we can get lower prices for almost everything but a few chemical items.''

The antitrust agreement between the American Telephone and Telegraph Company and the Justice Department has provoked a deep sense of unease across the country. In recent testimony and comments, members of Congress, members of the Federal Communications Commission, state utility regulators, state attorneys general, competitors of A.T.& T., large-scale users of telephone services and legal authorities all voiced dissatisfaction with the proposed settlement, though there is no consensus among them as to what should be done. And a poll commissioned by A.T.& T has found that consumers are concerned that the resulting breakup of the company and the passage of bills in Congress to change the settlement could hurt phone service and bring about increased rates. Two Related Questions The concern over the accord expressed in testimony before Congressional committees and the F.C.C. as well as in comments submitted to the Justice Department and the United States District Court here come down to two related questions. Will the local phone companies, divested by A.T.& T. and left to make it for the most part on local service alone, become weaker businesses as a result? And if so, what is to prevent the hardpressed local companies, just to stay in business, from raising their rates beyond the means of many of their customers?

Argentina's seizure of the Falkland Islands has brought a sense of humiliation and frustration to many Britons for whom the incident has served as a reminder of the decline of Britain as a world power. A widespread sense of anger has emerged over the Government's handling of a crisis with a country described in Parliament and in the streets as a ''tin-pot dictatorship.'' ''The Argentinians have shown us up and our Government has shown us up as well,'' said Patrick Bowe, a middle-aged electrician, as he sipped beer in a pub today. ''If we had had our forces over there, they wouldn't have bothered us.''

International Three Argentine marines were killed in a battle Saturday with a small contingent of British marines at Port Grytviken in the South Georgia Islands, which are in the Falkland group, the Argentine Government announced. Diplomats said that 12 to 20 British marines fought an unknown number of Argentines in the brief fighting. None of the British were killed, the official Argentine report said. (Page A1, Column 6.) Britons are angry and humiliated over Argentina's seizure of the Falkland Islands, creating a a major political crisis for the threeyear old Government of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Conservative and opposition spokesmen have been unrelenting in their criticism of the Government's failure to anticipate the takeover and in their calls for the resignation of Defense Minister John Nott and, not so severely, of Lord Carrington, the Foreign Secretary. (A1:4-5.)

THE scene could be any National Hockey League hotel room from Boston to Edmonton. Bryan Trottier and Mike Bossy are fighting again. It probably sounds like this: ''You did it again.'' ''What?'' ''Left the top off the toothpaste.'' In five seasons of sharing toothpaste on the road - Bossy said Trottier carries the tube -the ''fights'' have been far less frequent than the goals for one of the best combinations in sports history. ''Yeah, we have disagreements some time, husband-and-wife type things, like turning the TV off or the sound down or the lights off,'' said Bossy. ''I wouldn't fight him anyway. He's too strong.'' In the almost magical way that peanut butter gets along with jelly, these two almost painfully shy men from different parts of Canada have blended great individual talents into the best goal-producing combination outside of Wayne Gretzky and his grandfather. It is called ''chemistry'' and Al Arbour, the Islander coach and master chemist who first put the two men on the same line during the exhibition games of Bossy's rookie season, had no more idea he was stumbling onto the secret formula than did the inventor of the hamand-cheese sandwich. It took about 15 games, Arbour said, for him to ''know there was something special.''